When My Neighbor’s Wall is Breached

“_{Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”
Isaiah 58:112}

Like Rahab the former prostitute who eventually became Mrs. Caleb the priest, my house is on the wall of our estate (not city 😁). Well not exactly on the wall, but about ten meters from it. I rarely look at it, except when birds perch on it. Just realized now, just before I wrote this, that it is symbolic of my own spiritual call and posturing. Thats a story for another day. Let’s get back to this one. So am right next to the wall.

Last Monday, as I was sitting down on my desk which faces the window and the said wall, I noticed a security guard standing at the wall of a neighboring institution. It did not occur to me that it was a strange place for one to be standing, and that I now had a view right through. We just come from a traumatic and yet paradoxically, victorious weekend. The rains, floods, the WM meeting, and that I had been called on to minister at a fellowship in Kariobangi that Sunday. In Kiswahili. (To mitigate my afore mentioned challenges in preaching in this language, I have gone ahead and acquired a Kiswahili as well as a Luo Bible. I have a tendency of confusing these two languages drastically and catastrophically when speaking in public…and well…enough is enough. I am working on my public and more efficient utilization of both languages by reading the scriptures I am studying in all three languages. I now need a French one…AND… as we are on Bibles now, I need donations of these for members of the congregations I am called to sit with in Githurai, in Kariobangi and of cause in Embakasi where I live. In English and Kiswahili…ahem and in Ki-Luhyia.)

Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, in the heavy rains, we had to rush Gio to hospital…a fever gone awry. I have an amazing neighbor (thanks Aphlyne), two or three of these, and a praying kingdom community around me. Thank You LORD for this. God calmed this storm or I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to go teach on Sunday. If you know my relationship with my grandson…you understand this. Whenever he gets sick, I get, covertly, FAR worse off than he is… he actually knows this and reaches out to comfort me. COVERTLY AS WELL. May God turn around the incidences of these. The sickness attacks I mean. Anyway, so come Monday. And the wall. Then Friday. This time I took note. My neighbor’s wall had been a casualty of the floods. Gio confirmed it for me. “Dani, it fell down when you were taking me to the Oskitol.” I thought about a snake that had been killed around that time in our estate Court. I looked at the wilderness the toppled wall exposed and thought to myself that that was probably where it had come from, and that its parents and relatives probably lived in there. See where my thoughts FIRST took me. Eyishhhh. There was also a crowd of youth just hanging out there…in a…’discomfort inducing’ way. I did what I could. I took a picture of the wall, and settled down to pray and ask God if He wanted me to do anything about it. To speak to our Court about it. Silence.

“Help of the Helpless O Abide with me…”

Today, my friend Judy woke me up to talk about the floods. How these were affecting Nairobi. About doing something for the survivors. Let me just confess here, that I have not been aloof to what was happening around me. Personal concerns aside, I have been broken by the media being circulated on the same: people sleeping on roofs, people having their lives…reset…and not knowing how to take that first step, people dying, a father carrying the body of his dead child on his shoulders going…I have no idea where, cars with people in them being washed away…my concern for the children…the school year…how we do this one. For our leaders…that in making their decisions, they tune in to The Mind and Heart of God for His people in this region and beyond. We are not yet done with the survivors of the big blast at Embakasi’s Mradi…and then there is this crisis. And its hitting home…some of the warriors that stood for Mradi have been directly hit. And affected. Badly. I was thinking…that all I had to give, had been given. BEFORE the flood. That I needed to do something, but also needed something done for me, so I could. So, we did what I know to do, we prayed and asked God for the way forward. They did not need to articulate their requests…I needed to ask God what to do…when my neighbor had no wall about them anymore. The fact that yours fell off a long time ago, is no excuse for you to ignore their plight, when you can do something about it. I need help to help mine.

What about you, how is your neighbor doing? How is their wall? What can you do to help? God is brooding over the waters…as in The beginning. May He speak His Excellence in your neighborhood, as in mine.

_{“In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep [primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth]. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2 AMP}

#AlphaadOmega #DoItAgainELOHIM #InHisPresence

Brain Bursting Slander

So… something happened this morning . Or rather last night, but I did not find out till this morning. God kept me in perfect peace as I tried to resolve it, and scripts went around and round my head over who was to blame…I suspected malice. And there is that feeling when you have been ‘_maliced_’ that just wants to pay back. It’s a ‘sweet’ feeling…tickling somewhere in your core, but promising extreme bitterness and torture if you don’t just…exhale, vent and destroy someone else as you do. It came…that feeling…and I tried to resist it as I spoke to our court guards…etc…it was a security matter of a domestic nature . Social justice matter. I held down as long as I could…made about ten phone calls…then I heard my mouth open noisily like an ancient heavy and rusted metal door…and even more noisily emit ‘hot Lavea’ from ‘the center of the earth’. Hell itself. Akiiii Almighty God and Father of mine, please forgive me. Am so sorry. Noteworthy though, is that my plight seemed to make little impact on my audience while the words were gentle, but when the pong escaped my soul…now EVERYONE WAS INTERESTED…IN THE SIDE STORY . They gladly swallowed the defilement, when they could have initially helped me by drinking and proffering fresh waters my way.

Image by <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/…/hand-drawn-head-exploding…“>Freepik</a>

I remembered last night’s Bible Study. How Isaiah 6:1-7 had caught my heart and mind. That same-same core that was being tickled incessantly this morning. A few hours later. How God showed me that when I am truly in His Presence, He shows me things about myself…things that He doesn’t like…but does not leave me that way. He sent searing help to me quick-quick. For Isaiah and for me this morning…I needed to be purged with coal from Heaven’s altars, applied to my tongue. Oh LORD God, The Living One, The Eternal Commander of Heaven’s hosts – please forgive me. I thought my head would burst if I didn’t say something nasty about this…but I realize that I have risked more than that in even speaking about it as I did. I broke Your Heart, and Your trust in me with this, that was actually going to be a platform for Your Glory…if I left it all unspoken. I repent.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

“”In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw The LORD sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is The LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His Glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I said:

“WOE IS ME, FOR I AM UNDONE!

BECAUSE I AM A [WO]MAN OF UNCLEAN LIPS,

AND I DWELL IN THE MIDST OF A PEOPLE OF UNCLEAN LIPS;

FOR MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE KING,

THE LORD OF HOSTS.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

“Behold, this has touched your lips;

Your iniquity is taken away,

And your sin purged.””

Isaiah 6:1-7 NKJV

Dissent at The Point of Labor

I saw this picture though, and just smiled to myself. If you know, you know. But the knowing goes beyond physical maternal health; to the spiritual and just about every realm in which we have labored hard, painfully, and too long. Or even shortly, vigorously, with maddening intensity. Our journeys differ. I viewed it with sad humor…both intense – the sadness and the humor. I remembered being in labor after several months of pregnancy…each with its own story for another day. Each a miracle, just to get to that point of birthing, because science had emphasized that I would never be able to have children. Twice. (And… are currently trying again to prevent it from ever happening again, because of ‘matters arising’ and the miracle of a cycle that has refused to submit to the natural wear and tear of some decades and a half 😇😉🙃)

But…I will handle this from a spiritual perspective. We carry a divine conception…first that we could be chosen to be Family with The Living God…His Bride, His Children, His Brothers…IS in itself miraculous. [ok…here…I ‘dissolve myself’ in ululations directed at The Throne and The ETERNAL Occupant.] Oh that always is a thrill for me. Then that…HE COULD TRUST YOU AND ME…knowing how we are…could trust us with ANYTHING Kingdom… BUT THAT HE DOES. AMAZING STUFF. So incredulous that the ‘company of witnesses’ that know us well, or think they do from the bits and pieces of us they have been witness to, vigorously fight the call. NO. NO. NO. This CANNOT BE GOD – they say…etc. etc. And when we sit back sometimes and think of it, for what it costs us, where The Wind that is God blows us sometimes…to land in excruciating, perplexing places…we concur, a little bit, with the chorus of the unbelieving.

We are on delivery beds – our feet strapped us to enforce a stillness that would allow for God now to be God. To proclaim Life or Death. And we wiggle free, seeking the comfort we knew before the conception…seeking to be free…unencumbered…because we fast forget at such times…how the burdensome the journey before this time was….

We try to pack our bags…but we forget that the company of those we knew previously are now faded from the spotlight…and in their stead, according to The Wisdom of The Commander of Heaven’s hosts, are a faithful heavenly Maternal Health Support group, including Himself – our ETERNAL BABY DADDY…ready to help you through and past this final push. They bring us, sometimes not so gently, back to that place of stillness. Our feet strapped up, and what we hide from everyone else, open to all witnesses – ONLY in this place of birthing. A select group of witnesses. Active witnesses. Mostly positive witnesses. What are trying to run from, because it is suddenly too uncomfortable to step forward. Yield and hang up your feet to The Hands of God. We will get through this.

Shalom.

“But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.” BUT WE ARE NOT OF THOSE WHO SHRINK BACK AND ARE DESTROYED, BUT OF THOSE WHO HAVE FAITH AND PRESERVE THEIR SOULS.“
Hebrews 10:38-39

*No rights to this picture btw.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

BROKEN HEELS AND MORTALLY WOUNDED HEADS

Where do broken hearts and lives go? To whom will they belong?

So… you are out and abouting...and you see this other human being. Splendid looking. Seemingly DELICIOUS, provocative, alluring….You look, you see, you want, you desire, you crave…but even with those big bells banging in your skull you ALREADY KNOW that its not for forever that this desire had assaulted you …just to rub, to scratch an itch…for a moment. And after a moment or two, you imagine to yourself, that you would do anything to get that scratch…to be rid of that itch. Tell lies. Tell partial truths. Be kind. Be cruel. Buy gifts. Deny gifts – for the majority… Write poetry. Borrow other peoples’ songs to dedicate if you are not lyrically endowed…. Hang out with those you wouldn’t otherwise stand…smile at them even…face the elders and ancestors, argue your case even when it’s obvious – to even yourself – that you have none. Marry them because the itching does not go any other way in some cases. Even if you can only marry them verbally… If you are of a more base conviction, you club them over the head, or subdue them with potent substances…scratch and flee leaving them to deal with whatever you deposited in or on them…and whatever other consequences they have to deal with to pay, sometimes for a lifetime, for the fact that they temporarily assuaged your even more temporary discomfort. Discomfiture. Poh!!!!!

Let me start with some background. Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine, a spiritual friend…I ended up having the same conversation with three other spiritual friends…broaching this subject from three of the four poles. But let me start even earlier so you understand the picture attached to this post. A few years, I was out and abouting myself…on heels. Suddenly one of them got caught between the cracks of a street pavement…and when I tugged…it broke. I had to make a decision – would I walk on and complete my errands barefoot, or balance the other foot to the level of the still heeled one, walk through my day as though I was comfortable and then deal with the consequences as I rubbed my feet at home…in the evening? I opted for the latter. You can’t just be obvious all the time – right? I hope you are understanding this situation from at least three poles…right? A word is sufficient for the wise. I took a picture of my shoes when I got home…and that’s what that…down there…is. My former, or rather, ex-shoes.

So, then this week happened. I was in a situation, reviewing a previous rejection by an association due to a recently concluded relationship. In plain English, my heart was broken, my body and spirit beaten, I could not hold in anything that went in, or keep what was there before. Aside from this, I was mourning the death of one dear one that I had known all my life…and then went through a sharply articulated eviction from a status I was born into, but realized that I would probably have to walk the rest of my life with, only as a memory. Understood? Have you been there? If not, please, I pray you never do. Unless it’s for your good, and The Glory of God. For me…I shed excess weight…drastically, which came with wardrobe challenges for both outer and inner wear 😁😇. If you know, you know. I bowed over and mourned with my entire life, emitting life, it was coming out of all my pores…there is a picture I took late last year…that was…scary…more than one photo from that season…that I was vehemently commanded to unplug from my social media…because I looked dead, or like ‘something’ that was. I WAS…dying. And I knew it. There was nothing I could do about it. But God. He…has ways…Yes He does.

So, I go to this interview…and not really because I trust, but because I find it easier to say the truth and deal with the consequences rather than take time out of what is left of my life trying to remember and defend lies…efforts in futility…I poured out my heart. Are you married? And the floodgates opened. I couldn’t cry anymore, because…I was basically dehydrated…of anything liquid in me. Anything that could flow. My interviewer listened…trying to hide her horror at my story. I could tell what she was thinking. I could NEVER belong. I understood her completely. If I was in her place, I would PROBABLY be in her shoes. Walking her way. Then God caught up with her as she ‘fled the scene’, and she remembered possibly, LOVE. Saw my battle wounds. Saw beyond my ‘dehydration’ that I still believed…that God COULD. So. she passed the rejection to a more vigilant warrior to effect it…to bury me alive if possible. And I went…’to my own funeral’… walked in, sat through the next interview…fought valiantly…clung to God and His instructions when He sent me into this situation…I STILL BELIEVED. And even though the one with the itch had turned their back, even though I was ‘out of status’, even though technically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, I was standing before about eight open graves, I held on. They were beloved of God…and were holding on to what they knew too. From their perspective, they were destroying a bug, me, and doing their best to wipe out the smudge. I was too dehydrated to cry…so I leaned…leaned heavily on God…and on the ones He sent me to Love. Because even here, Loving still made sense. I don’t know if you have ever been here…

They said no to me. And it seemed to me, were offended that I did not die. And I say that in the nicest way I can. You see, they sincerely believed, still do, that I had sinned. That I had rebelled. Was an offensive outsider, an enemy. And that the mercy of Christ could never cover one like me. I on the other hand, knew, that I had been sent. The consequences were none of my business, obedience was. So, I obeyed. And loved. And the scratches became little pen-knife nicks, then were emboldened into stabs. I cried out as I obeyed. I had no one, nowhere, except this place. But God. He carried me through. One day, I couldn’t anymore, so I pleaded with Him, to let me go. The pain was killing me…I was still wounded from the eight open graves…and living in a ninth…alive…waiting for them to shovel in the sludge…so I could be…not even a memory. I began to claw out of that grave…and He, God helped me. I carried guilt for quitting…for letting God down by quitting…but I remembered who was not ready for the next day, if I was to die on that one. And on the other side of the grave, He met me and embraced me and strengthened me and widened the scope of His Love through me. And many times, my eyes would meet those of the most ardent warrior…and I could tell he was thinking that I was doing this to win his approval…and acceptance into association. I could tell also, that he was determined NEVER TO ALLOW IT as long as he was in that privileged position. But I was loving…for The Lover…Love Himself. God Himself. Without Whom I was, am, nothing. No one. No ones…

A leadership crisis and I became a leader in that association, without membership…and it was time again to show me how unlovable I was to God. And to His people. So, I made the appointment…so I could hear him out. And he ploughed at me. Scripture after scripture. God could not love me. But it was different this time. I had been through so much stripping…and had learnt to be strong without cloths, without props, without underwear. They had fallen off me like King Saul’s armor may have off a little shepherd boy named David as he walked in on behalf of a nation to cut off the head of a giant that had troubled them. Like the other Saul, the Apostle a.k.a. Paul, neither the bite nor the poison ‘took’.

That woman from last year IS DEAD. Perhaps they did shovel her and seal her in after all. But this version of her…has her head in and with God. She sees more than you would want her to…and will not react outside of God’s prompting. So, he reeled out how those wounded by family relationships, could not serve as leaders…and I asked if we were not playing into the enemy’s hands. An enemy that would strike the leaders, knowing that their colleagues, their Aarons and Hurs, would drop their hands in a second and use their own swords to gut them where they stood holding up God’s Kingdom should it become evident that their flesh not conform to the standards of their own understandings. And that the flocks would wander off…disappointed, dejected, doubting God, doubting the value of Life and Godliness, choosing Despair, Destruction and finally Death. Where was the place for restorative Love? Why were we using valuable artillery against our own gravely wounded and dying warriors? Warriors called out BY GOD to lead the battles, to lead us into victory…because someone used them as a scratcher…and then got tired and moved on to find more elaborate scratchers. Because their children do not look like the others that belong to the association…So, we not only turn our backs to their pain and to them – we also have our own issues to deal with – moreover we pursue them for learning to live without us…to steal what God would still have them retain, not even to use because the instruction Manual is The Living God Himself AND He HASN’T DECIDED TO TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF WHAT we STOLE TO us, then, we decide to kill them in myriad ways… Do we really know this God that we have refused to get intimate with, and block others from His redemptive embrace?…Sighhhhhh…. Where are the brokenhearted going to around you? Do you care? Or are they casting a blight on your narrative by being hurt, being hurt in ways unlike ours, and for longer than WE WOULD ALLOW THEM TO BE? Where are the broken-hearted around you, that walk in the embrace of God…and He is strengthening to destroy the serpents that would be aiming at your heels in your own future?

Back to you from the beginning. The one with the itch. So, today is Friday. And you may have that itch again…first of all, avoid me. I am actually dead…and alive to another realm… I am done balancing heels that do not exist for He to Whom I belong, has fitted me with those that CANNOT wear out. And warriors have been activated to defend my course in God AND me, that if you saw with your naked eyes would lead to your own dehydration of both inner and outer wear. If therefore you are looking to complicate someone else’ like – Avoid me. Second, if you do go out and use the image and likeness of God for a scratcher to ‘get your hair in place’ know that for them, it never really ends there. Even if they seem Game. Sometimes…they live with the death you projected their way…several lifetimes over. So please remember my many words… take a brisk walk or run around your hood, then GO HOME, to your habitat and take a cold shower, warm cocoa, put on some fiery worship music and pray for yourself and for your intended victim/s that God would keep them from the snares those, like you formerly were, had dug out for them. Many times, our games deny those we didn’t think we were hurting that much, their very lives and destinies. Be responsible.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

“Then one of the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] said to me, Stop weeping! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root (Source) of David, has won (has overcome and conquered)! He can open the scroll and break its seven seals!

And there between the throne and the four living creatures (beings) and among the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God [the sevenfold Holy Spirit] Who have been sent [on duty far and wide] into all the earth.

He then went and took the scroll from the right hand of Him Who sat on the throne.

And when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] prostrated themselves before The Lamb. Each was holding a harp (lute or guitar), and they had golden bowls full of incense (fragrant spices and gums for burning), which are the prayers of God’s people (the saints)…

Saying in a loud voice, Deserving is The Lamb, Who was sacrificed, to receive all the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and majesty (glory, splendor) and blessing!”
Revelations 5:5-12

AMPC

Some of the Things He Said on Good Friday

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

My Ringed Fingers

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?“
Jesus Christ in Mark 8:36-37

This evening, I was distractedly looking at my fingers contemplating the two rings that I wear very rarely these days. Gold. Yes. I have two golden rings. One a broken circle with four stones on my ‘wedding finger’, the other on my ‘God finger’ – same finger on my right hand – a beautiful delicate piece graced with a heart at its center. I once tried to sell them…during dire times, but the lady who I had been told buys gold would not buy them. She said what she could give me for them would not be worth the effort. Besides. she had already gone over her limit for buying used jewelry for the day. I was looking at those rings today, or rather last night, against the very soft light at Southfield Mall and just thinking how beautiful they were – in this light.

My thoughts wandered off, and I remembered some really valuable loops I once owned. Gold. Pure gold. Very high quality. One of the only two pairs of real gold earrings I have ever owned. My favorite – the other pair broke where it cannot be worn again, and a piece of it got lost during the myriad house evictions my household has lived through. I wore them all the time, everywhere, so much that I forget how valuable they were, and how dangerous wearing some of those things in some of ‘these places’ could be. So, one day, I was on the way to a place that I had never been, for the wedding of one of my brothers in Love. I think that was the day I tried to sell my rings. I dont know what happened to me when I left that shop but I was not as alert as I usually am while walking. I notice EVERYTHING without lifting my head or seeming to look around. My friend and current walk partner Ps. Anne likes to joke about me, that I should be FBI or some high-level spy. I laugh nervously when she says that…I actually see more than most people would be comfortable with my noticing. But thankfully, I forget quickly…or to be more accurate, forgive with alacrity. Life is too short to carry EVERYTHING you find with you all the way. But…back to what I was really saying. I got a little distracted after leaving that lady’s shop. I wanted to sell the rings so I could get a present for my in-law, as well as transport to and from the wedding and still feed my household when I got home. So, when I found I could not, I tucked them into my handbag and walked about a really densely populated portion of Kenya, praying for a miracle.

Suddenly, it felt as though a friend was hugging me from behind while tugging playfully at my ears. Then there was a sudden release and in the two or so seconds it took me to turn around, I saw a young boy, about 10 years old at most running away from me. I realized that he had been tugging at my earrings and had managed to get one off and that it was in his hands. I thought about screaming for help from the public…but at the same time I remembered my own very difficult pregnancy journeys, and my own pain in the labor wards. I looked at his fleeing back and wondered if I would ever wear that earring, if I had to pick it up from a pool of his blood after the public had dealt with him. I wondered about his mother…and her own labor pains. So, I stood and watched him run from death, from danger, from consequences, from me – his victim. I absentmindedly took off the other earring and a witness who had been standing near me as though he had NOT noticed the whole thing, stepped up to me and informed me that there were shops near there that bought gold to melt and resell. He suspected that that was where the young lad was headed, and I could try to trace his steps and buy my earring back before it was melted. My feet followed his advice. I forgot that even if I found that earring, I had no money to buy it back. I did not even have money at that time to get back home. At the end of my footsteps, I managed to sell my remaining loop for about 3,000/. Kenya shillings. Almost a hundred times less than it was worth in cash and incomparably less than it meant to me overall.

I am thinking about this today because it just occurred to me how much we take for granted what is truly precious, because it’s always there for us, with us. Until the day we loose a portion of it, and have to negotiate with God in public, over the cost of getting it back versus letting it belong to someone else. Someone to whom it may not mean much beyond a few thrills, and who would discard what was attached to your life for a set of pebbles…in less than a heartbeat. What’s your story so far in this regard. Let’s not loose anymore…what we will still mourn over, decades later. Look at who/what you have in the soft and True Light of Who God is. Perhaps, and I hope, He will birth in you a renewed appreciation of what He has given you, that is RIGHTLY UNLIKE WHAT HE HAS GIVEN ANOTHER.

Shalom. Do have a blessed week.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

God…Seemingly

Sometimes…we look down on a person because of our seemingly elevated positions above them…and God remains seemingly silent…unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes we betray them, [and because they are spirit too they know it] because we sit in forums where it seems okay to break their confidences and twist what we know about them in the worst ways possible…and God remains seemingly silent…seemingly unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes…we reward their smiles with scorn because something happened in our lives and another in theirs that sets us up as seemingly superior. Sometimes…we are privileged to see their need…even of us…and we gleefully walk away…because that is the plan with those that we know hate them…and it seems that we are LOVED BECAUSE THEY ARE HATED…like we are RICHER BECAUSE THEY ARE POORER… like we are IN BETTER BECAUSE THEY ARE AT THE BOTTOM…where we believe they will stay forever. We keep our ties with them…because we are determined to do ALL WE CAN to keep them at a disadvantage, because we SINCERELY ARE CONVICTED that their DOOM IS FOR OUR GLORY…

And God remains seemingly silent…seemingly approving by this posture, of our antiques…seemingly unmoved by their pain and our relentless onslaught over them.

I wonder sometimes…why we waste our energies, beating at those that we are TRULY CONVICTED CAN NEVER RISE FROM THE POSITION IN WHICH THEY ARE BURIED. Us and our company. Are we really convinced of what we tell ourselves over them…or is our back and forth, to collect information by which they can be kept down, also a sign that we don’t TRULY BELIEVE that ANYTHING can keep them down permanently, and we hope that they are fooled enough by our smiles, and fake geniality towards them, that in their EVENTUAL rising and TRANSFIGURATION, we would have carved ourselves a position as their ONLY FRIEND?

They know…. they know…from their position beneath us…they are better placed to see our nakedness…and it’s probably the filth they see…and smell, or the fact that God lies there with them…holding them still…that they too remain silent…and allow us to go as far as we believe we can…as we stand over them.

God seems silent, unmoved, uncommunicative, powerless, unloving…far removed today…

But CAN HE REALLY BE?

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

AFTER I AM WORN OUT – THE FALLACY OF ASSOCIATING INCREASED AGE WITH DECREASED BEAUTY

I want to start this with a disclaimer: Although in my youthful days, I may have felt, and perhaps honestly looked like a full-stop in the company of…about all my female friends, I don’t think I was that bad to behold. In fact, I think I was beautiful too. At the end of the sentence/line, but beautiful too. Don’t protest – I know who my friends were and how they looked. Exquisite. The truth though, is that I did not feel beautiful. Not really. I was going through a lot then as well, that did not really affirm me – and although I thankfully, took many, many photographs…it was mainly because I believed I looked far better in them than I did in real life. I am extremely photogenic. Without filters. Extremely…so when you look at a photo of me, especially on a ‘good day’, and you are perhaps thinking, if you are male, of directing our association another way, please…ask God to lend you His ALL-SEEING EYES for a minute . Ahem. I actually look much better from His perspective.

I will be back to me, but let me talk about a lady that has totally inspired me. Sarah Abraham – the matriarch of Israel. Both the half-sister and wife of Abraham. A beautiful woman. Barren in the days when she was considered a great beauty…until perhaps past her 70s. A woman who kings could kill to try elevate to the role of their Queen. Today though, God led me to her story in Genesis 17-18. Just before her story changed. I don’t know if in her youth, despite being constantly reminded of just how exquisite she was by her fearful husband, Sarah ever felt beautiful. She fell short in perhaps the perceptively key role of a woman in her day – that of being a mother. She elevated another woman into her marriage; a young, probably not as beautiful woman to surrogate her divine role in the foundations of her nation, and this woman and later her offspring, mocked her for being infertile. She must have known she was beautiful…and fearfully loved by the most important male, pre-Isaac, in her life. I don’t know if post-Hagar, Abraham lost his vigor and awe at the beauty of Sarah…the passion by which he had placed her in a pedestal from which he would knock her off and hide her identity at the whiff of a threat (O…Abraham and I will probably have to have a candid conversation over this one in eternity. This is one of the stories that absolutely traumatizes me in the scriptures…but well…let me not stray here.) Sarah thinks something here [Genesis 18:12] that just broke my heart today…and probably God’s in her day: ““AFTER I AM WORN OUT and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” [NIV] HOW NOW? How could she think God Who had just changed her name to put it in Caps would be limited in fulfilling His promises to her, because of some human standard….? BECAUSE GOD – she did get that pleasure AGAIN. In spite of looking worn out, to herself. God You Are Good!

Back to me as I cease tearing down at Sarah and Abraham. Last Sunday, God dressed me up to attend Service at one of our local assemblies. I looked resplendent in Ivory. [Ok, some would say I was in white…but strictly speaking I was in a light ivory]. We had a prayer meeting to pre-dedicate our church sanctuary in the afternoon. After this powerful assembling of God’s people, I passed by our ‘local grocery’ to pick milk and bread and just browse through the aisles and plan for ‘next time I had money to shop’. An ‘old, old man’ [my extremely wounded perspective] approached me smiling as though we knew each other from somewhere. With my memory these days, it is possible we did. Anyway, when he was close to me he said to me with a dark smile “You are my agemate. Yes, you, you. You are my real agemate and we shall soon retire together.” I was…many things…at that exact moment…none of them good…but I probably presented him with a blank but calm look that belied the sudden increased turmoil inside me, and simultaneously decided that his drama could not afford to finance and heal me from the effects of a sudden hypertensive crisis. I walked away. Bemused. When I got to the cashier, a very young girl I asked her “Do I look old?” She was astounded and asked me “Why?” I told her about the ‘old, old man’ I had encountered along the aisles…she did not even smile. She looked at me and said to me. “No. You are beautiful. And you do not look old. That man probably was dealing with his own issues, so forget him.” I cant say I was sufficiently comforted by her words…because his words still rang louder in my mind. And…just…the…wondering why anyone could be that cruel to a stranger… Then I decided he must have been a demon made manifest to move me from the beautiful day I had just had. This comforted me as my thoughts went back to how God had showed up for us.

Still, every time I have seen myself since, particularly through the lenses of my phone camera, I have wondered why I look so old. Perhaps I met with a wizard who cast a spell on me. Not nice. Perhaps, it’s because this year begun, and has prevailed for me with a thoroughly broken heart and it’s probably showing on my face, though it [the heartache] has become for me, one of my closest companions. I don’t know…rejection can cloud one’s lenses, right? But I have been extra critical of myself, even more, since. Not very honoring to God The Artist Who created me. Right? I repent.

Suddenly it hit me – just a few minutes ago: So what? Why would it bother me whether I looked young or old? What would God want for me, that I would be barred from, based on how I or others assessed me with regard to my looks? Why have I associated youth with beauty and age with…errr…less beauty (let’s not even think that word please )? I think I look better now, to be honest, than I have ever looked. Maybe it’s the shackles that anchored the thick veils over my eyes on ‘Ugly Bay’ that have fallen off…but I feel lighter inside…even in spite of the things happening that should make me otherwise. I have no immediate answers to this complex question that plagues my oft inquiring mind. This post is actually more for me to consider five years from today, when I have come to my fullness of true beauty and need to testify to God’s Goodness. But also, for you. Be beautiful/handsome at whatever age you are. However you look. Even if someone foolishly puts ‘old, old’ before your definition because you rubbed them rather roughly upon your first meeting . You ARE BEAUTIFUL. And whether or not you feel it or look it, WILL NOT LIMIT GOD FOR BLESSING YOU AS EXTRAVAGANTLY AS HE LONGS TO DO.

Shalom my friend.

PS: I shared this post with my daughter and my 8-year old grandson. When I came back to the room they watched me awhile, smiling then:

Gio: Dani is not old. Sindiyo Mami? She is young.

Shukri: No Baba…Dani is not young.

Gio: I actually meant that her youth has been renewed, isn’t that right Mami?

Shukri: Yes, yes, yes Papa. That is accurate.

Dani (me) opens her arms and Gio rushes into them with a huge hug. We hold onto each other for about a minute. I dont know if its just me, but there is something about the hug of a child you love, that…strengthens one. Gio does that for me.

Shukri: Dani. You are beautiful. But you also look really sad these days. Dont worry about it though…it will pass. It will be well. It will be okay. Soon.

Dani: (holding back my tears) Amen dear. Amen. This too shall pass.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

Jewelry by Shanga na Kanga Designs

EX ME

I hear a lot about narcissism referring to OTHER PEOPLE. (Let’s be honest – sometimes it’s simply a case of the initial/stronger/louder/more regular narrator of the tale owning the narrative – but am learning that there are many sides to a story. Even the ones I like to tell.) It could be true ALL THE TIME…and that what they put you through is unforgivable. But when I personally get to this place, I ask myself (mostly after wailing, raving and ranting) who the nicest person I know is…and if I have ALWAYS treated HIM as He deserves. What would God say about ME if He had to FACTUALLY share the story of US.

Ahem…I am an ex to MANY people. Ex-relative, ex-colleague, ex-friend, ex-classmate, ex-student, ex-congregant, ex-tenant, ex-neighbor, ex-roomie which sometimes embraces the more scandalous – ex-lover…many times over. Numerically and situationally (I don’t take endings and signs of these without a proper war). Some, I have forgotten, but hopefully not the good and bad lessons I learnt while entering, living or exiting these.

We try, and sometimes our authenticity or fear of the same, brings out the worst in those we really love…or really want to Love. Forgive. Sometimes, many times over, what we need is beyond the ability of the other person to provide. They need divine armory – fully loaded but are not yielded enough to even know what to do with what’s available. It’s ok. They will grow. Sometimes ELSEWHERE. FAR AWAY FROM WHERE YOU ARE PROBABLY.

God remembers daily that He created me from the rib of a dust-man (who…ahem…is probably yet to wake up to find me either sprawled or well arranged -soft, perfumed, ‘properly toned and curved’ – by his side ). His Grace is Reset daily for me – and that’s the standard that He calls me to set up for those He entrusts in relationship with me. My enemies, my ex’s and my currents…there is fruit He expects to find when He comes inspecting (for peksen). Let Him find in me a Hybrid of Love and Forgiveness…to His Standards. Unabashedly. Am moving on, forgetting the former things…and embracing…BIGGER, without yesterday’s baggage.

I am not God’s ex – thankfully – but what really is His Story of us? Ahem.

#Reset#LivingInHisPresence

vipslit@yahoo.ca

GIVE THANKS IN ALL SITUATIONS

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